PC? Scroll down to 4.1 of the following link: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/81613ElectricBlue187 said:
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Dragon Age: Origins |OT| Letting The Fade fade out of memory
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
What up with that random Viking ship in the Fade?
It's like, the only object in the game that's blatant yet doesnt have a codex entry :lol
It's like, the only object in the game that's blatant yet doesnt have a codex entry :lol
Son of Godzilla
Banned
Whoo, beat it. What a completely satisfying game. Haven't plugged 60 hours into something in ages.
Rabbit Lord
Member
johnsmith said:
I agree that it doesn't share much with Fallout 3 but I do think DA's combat is sorta mmo-ish.
Minsc said:
Arde5643 said:
DEX does give dmg bonusses but only on daggers and bows, check this chart to see what ability mod affects weapon dmg (and for what %)
http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/items/weapons
(so even your Lethality dagger rogue needs dex to add to weapon dmg... and going Lethality rogue style with dual longswords makes little sense because longsword dmg is 100% STR based. Yes; rogues are a pain to spec. I wonder when they'll release that bloody hotfix/patch in a full patch for the game, like 1.02 or something, I put my rogue mainchar on hold for now.)
(and 1 dex = +0.50 to hit/attack score / +1 defense)
oversight here -> http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/attributes/dexterity
Son of Godzilla
Banned
One of those secret achievements better be sitting through the credits, this has been 20 minutes already.
johnsmith said:
Yeah maybe not so much Fallout since it's party based, but I still feel like the overall gameplay is pretty similar except Fallout had a much more open ended world. I picked mage and all I've had to do is run around and cast the occasional spell while my party just wipes people out.
As far as WoW is concerned, I really feel like I'm just playing a single player console version of it with AI party members. Not necessarily a bad thing but most things I've done so far feel exactly like doing quests and dungeons.
Again, really early on in the game but nothing has stood out for me yet. Will forge on still.
lorddarkflare
Banned
Rabbit Lord said:
Not really, they are both inspired by the same source.
Hero said:
Glad i stay away from Wow. Quests in dungeons in this game are not too great.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
Put the difficulty above easy and get to your first random encounter. Auto-pilot only works for the first couple hours. Well, and the last twenty.Hero said:
lorddarkflare
Banned
Hero said:
Ignore him.
Even if it gets a little easy i would suggest keeping it at normal.
I played the game on Nightmare and all i got was a frustrating grind (not literal), not very rewarding for some odd reason.
lorddarkflare said:
Seems like it depends a lot on what kind of party you got. My rogue PC (combat) with Leliana (utility), Wynne (healing) and Allistair (tank) have a hard time on normal. With my warrior PC (tank), two mages and Leliana (archer/utility) I'm just steamrolling the game on hard.
Might put it on nightmare for my mage playthrough but if it's going to be superfrustrating I'll pass. For now hard was well... hard sometimes but certainly doable, even without too much microing. (enemy -> clustered > 3 -> sleep -> walking nightmare :lol )
Just seems so imbalanced at times, entire party dies early on in some bossfight and my tank PC just keeps going, popping pots and dishing out dmg with Starfang, basically solo'd broodmother that way, was pretty lame but she died eventually...
Son of Godzilla
Banned
I wasn't being condescending you sensitive little moist towelette. Simply put the difficulty above easy and get your first random encounter and the game will be much harder and you will be forced to play it like KOTOR/ME instead of a MMO-lite. Although, mages are much easier than the other classes at the start.Hero said:
lorddarkflare
Banned
koji said:
You do not understand, i absolutely owned the game on Nightmare (Rogue+Wynne+Morrigan+Allister).
My problem was that i felt no joy in it. Upping the difficulty does not make the game more challenging (and thus rewarding when surmounted) it makes it more frustrating.
Son of Godzilla said:
Not the best examples, as those were pretty mindless. I have played MMO's with more combat complexity and depth(GW, though i suppose that is not fair).
lorddarkflare said:
Yeah I guess once you figure out some good combos/tactics they work on all game difficulties.
Not really sure if I'll go for Nightmare, the hardest encounter I had so far in the game, where I whiped the most was pretty early on in Redcliff, a group of 7 Mabaris or something and they just kept on overwhelming my party, think it took 7 or 8 reloads and it wasn't really a superhard encounter, just frustrating. Was such a trivial fight when you look at all the stuff I did besides that but those damn dogs really gave me a run for my money... I imagine you get more stuff like that on Nightmare, not really a challenge but more luck of the draw stuff.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
lorddarkflare said:
Well yea, but I meant more about having to pause and juggle the party as opposed to just letting everything run amok.
lorddarkflare
Banned
Son of Godzilla said:
Ahh, good point.
koji said:
Nope. Any situation where i died was because i was really lazy. But i am very OCD when it come to micro-ing my stuff, so that probably has a lot to do with it.
whatevermort
Member
Hero said:
Alright: I'd give you the taskbar and the design of Orzammar (if you argued those things), but the quests? There's no grind in Dragon Age! Everything was an actual quest with actual reason for doing it outside of an excuse to collect ten feathers! Surely that alone makes it feel different?
lorddarkflare
Banned
whatevermort said:
Many of the quests were of the MMO variety (sort of like Mass Effect, but more organized). Not the the grinding kind though.
About the only thing that makes them bearable is the fact that they happen quickly and are so insignificant, you probably do not realize that you are doing them (large majority of them were random encounters).
I suppose my biggest issue is that they are mostly bland and add little to the world, AND are not very much fun/challenging to boot (even the ones that offer mini-dungeons suck, as the dungeon crawling and the loot suck).
In short, KOTOR did it right (though it had less content, so it needed less filler. So perhaps DA has too much content?).
If you don't feel the need to micro your other party members, up the difficulty. You may eventually set tactics so as you don't have to micromanage them quite as much, but they shouldn't just do the whole job for you. It should feel like WoW, but a more strategic WoW where you have to control the whole party and not just control a single character.Hero said:
The quests that you pick up from objects in dungeons add a lot to the world. The make the dungeons feel like real locations where real events occurred, rather than a mere succession of rooms.lorddarkflare said:
My natural inclination in games is to become lazy, which is why I like Nightmare. It keeps me on the edge of my seat.lorddarkflare said:
lorddarkflare
Banned
Fredescu said:
For the most part, those quests are actually good (though they could be better), they were not the ones I was referring to.
Also, a good way to make the dungeons feel more like places and not ' a mere succession of rooms' is to actually design them such that they are fun to explore (The Fade was the ONLY good one, and even it had serious issues).
Lastly, not sure about edge of my seat, but yeah after the dex hotfix, i got to straightening out my gambits pretty quick on Nightmare (i am thinking that playing through it on my first play-through may have been a mistake).
Son of Godzilla
Banned
I said you need to have it above easy and wait a while, nothing to do what specific difficulty you had it on. And enough with the petty little interjections, you are shitting up the thread.Hero said:I'm not sensitive at all, you're just an ass, which you've proven time and time again in countless threads. Your assumption that I was playing easy was you being condescending, dick.
Oh look at me, pretending that discussing exactly how much the first three hours of this game resemble Fallout 3 wasn't doing that already. My theory is you based that entirely upon having to kill mutant rats in the Human origin.
Edit: And the only quests I disliked were the message board shit. They all sucked eggs, and were pointless. Thankfully they more or less complete themselves with all the quest marker shit. Gaxking = the best sidequest, by far.
whatevermort said:
Without devolving this thread into a typical GAF one, I don't typically play "Western" style RPGs. So while many people are questioning my comment about it being similar to Fallout 3, to me it's at least in the same genre. Sure, the setting and combat system are different but some of the base gameplay mechanics are at least similar. Maybe it would have been better if I had played BG2 but I missed out on that back in the day.
Fredescu said:
Someone with genuine advice! I'll try upping the difficulty then. And yeah, if there's quests that give more depth then that's great. While it's still early game, so far the quests I have done are all pretty linear but good to hear there's more than just a quest hub.
Son of Godzilla said:
Actually I'm an Elf mage and just drank the blood after being in the wilds. Sure, not far like I've said several times but I was only giving my initial impressions.
Compared to something like Risen, there's no real exploration in this game. In the context of a story driven RPG though, I think the dungeons in DA are actually pretty good. When you start picking up the codex entries and finding out why there's an altar here, or why a tunnel was dug through there, or that this table was used in summoning rites, and so on, it really adds a lot of character to the dungeon and to the world as a whole. I don't know if that counts as "fun to explore", especially since sans story the level design is fairly basic, but I can't think of many recent games that have given a similar experience. I can think of a lot that have had worse level design and blander dungeons that I've still enjoyed.lorddarkflare said:
Maybe so. I was determined to play my first playthrough completely unpatched.lorddarkflare said:
lorddarkflare
Banned
Fredescu said:
:lol So can i.
Perhaps i am too demanding, but i really cannot settle for what Bioware passed as good level design though.
And worse of all, i would actually not mind that much if there was not so MUCH filler and fluff when it came to these dungeons.
I think the best way to fix it would be to cut the size of every dungeon in the game by half.
Actually, the game has an excess of filler and fluff in most of its departments (except for Dialogue and companions, the writers delivered in these departments).
I feel you guys on the dungeons. I like DA but after playing it and Mass Effect(first time a few weeks ago from the steam sale) I am not sure if I am interested in their "dungeon" design. It is like they make western JRPGs too.
I do really like the game but I feel confined. This is probably because after the origins I have only done redcliff and circle of magi areas.
I do really like the game but I feel confined. This is probably because after the origins I have only done redcliff and circle of magi areas.
lorddarkflare
Banned
Grayman said:
Funny you say this because JRPGs usually have better dungeon design than WRPGs.
Anyway, despite the fact that i take every opportunity to knock this game, i do really like it. I am just not sure whether i will ever have it within me to do another playthrough (probably, i had the same issues with FF12 and i am almost done with my third playthrough).
whatevermort
Member
Nemesis556 said:
When it moves to the bit far away from you, use the archers or the Mages, and get yourself on those trebuchet things, because they're the key to taking it down. Just spam it from the front with as many of your people as you can, have them all healing each other (or Wynne doing it for you) and you fire off those big old arrows at that little fucker.
they probably do. my first western rpg experiences were morrowind and fallout, which aside from a few sewers do not have dungeons at all. So to me, bioware's games i've tried are half way along the spectrum to jrpg based on the dungeons and invisible walled off forests.lorddarkflare said:
I like the combat and the banter is good but the freedom that attracted me to the genre is not there on the level i expected. I usually do not finish these games but I probably will finish DA because of how it is structured.
koji said:
Well the hotfix doesn't change that much, only for special builds it's necessary. It also makes enemy archers much harder.
With lethality you can use cunning instead of strength. Right now daggers use 100% strength (instead of 50% dex 50% str as it should be), with lethality ou have 100% cunning for damage as it replaces strength.
If dex=cunning it doesn't change anything. But you usually go for the assasin specialization if you are playing a rogue with daggers. Exploit weakness also enhances backstab damage depending on your cunning bonus. Don't forget that cunning also boosts bard songs, helps with coercion and lockpicking. If you have high cunning, you don't need to max lockpicking and coercion so you save some points you can spend on other things.
If you go for maximum damage you have to raise cunning over dex anyways. If cunning>dex you do more damage.
In that case, you will do less damage with the hotfix. It probably would help early in the game, as you get lethality on level 8 and exploit weakness on level 12.
Overall I'd say you are better without the patch if you go for high damage and backstabbing. With the fix, you can boost you attack and defense rating so you are better if you are attacking from the front but you do less damage when backstabbing. For that build I'd choose duellist as 2nd spec instead of bard. With evasion and high defense this rogue could also be used as light tank as it is very hard to hit him.
Moonstone said:
The problem with that playthrough atm is that I have two rogues in my party, Leliana (lockpicker/archer) and me combatrogue (dagger dualwielder), they're both Bards (only lvl 12 atm). Due to having two rogues in the group I kinda have an underpowered groupsetup and I "have" to use the hotfix. I get by playing on normal though but I'm "stuck" now in the deep roads. Well stuck, I basically said fuckit and wait for a real patch and started a new playthrough. (darkspawn archers are tearing my group apart and I don't have enough CC/healing/armor wearing partymembers)
I should have enough skills in about 4 lvls though to ditch Leliana and go with one rogue in my group though.
Rogues in DA are pretty special but they seem to be broken at the same time as well, there's just so many routes you can go with rogues, boost STR, have them dualwield longswords and let them wear massive armor, go for a lightweight daggerrogue, play an archer, play utility... After a while you get the feeling that Bioware doesn't really know it themselves what they want with the class. The flexibility is nice but I allready tried different approaches using the respec mod and it just never "feels" right.
Maybe that's because I was expecting something like a classic DnD dexfighter/dualwielder type but it just doesn't work that way in DA... In other words it could just be me.
Are you sure that you don't need to have the max tier in lockpicking and can just compensate that with your cunning bonus? Think the locks work in tiers, like coercion does a bit. Not really sure about those mechanics. It's true the other way around, even with max tier lockpicking skill and low cun you won't be able to open certain chests, that's a fact, but can you bypass a tier lockpicking skill by stacking cunning?
I'd say the opposite. Fighters are pretty lame, because after you decided which weapon style you use, there is no real decision which skills you get. Only for specs and even those decisions are not hard. You get all skills eventually. The only difference is how much you put in dex, str con and in which order you take the skills. This is why rogues are great as you can specialize better.
If you want a D&D'ish dualwielder choose the warrior class and put everything in Dex and strength. It's pretty strong, has good tanking abilities thanks to the high dex and does a lot of damage with berserker mode turned on. A lot more than twohanders. Played a dw warrior on my first playthrough and never had major problems on hard. Except for Sir Cauthrien.
Rogues play different than in NWN and the likes as it you never fight from the front, you have to backstab always. Every normal attack is a waste. And you have to push cunning, dex isn't so much important as in D&D, because of the aggro and flanking. Flanking gives you +20 attack as a rogue, so even if you have low dex and strength, you will hit.
Attack speed is also different than in D&D. In DA it depends only on the weapons. In D&D a strenght or a dex fighter would always have more attacks than a rogue.
And if you have a good tank with threatening, you should not bother with your defense, if everything plays out as it should be, you will not be attacked often. You kill from behind to support your warrio or to eliminate tose that you mage stunned. And warriors do less damage than a good backstabbing rogue. Especially with runes on your daggers.
Stealth is pretty good to, as you get an autocrit if you attack from stealth. Especially for archers this is great, as you can get every 10 seconds a autocrit with combat stealth for just 5 stamina cost. The archery talent which does an autocrit uses 40 stamina instead and has the same cooldown time as stealth. Rogues are pretty strong if played right.
If Orzammar right now is to hard, do the forrest, redcliffe or the circle first. You could also kick Leliana out and come back with her after you cleared the level. If you have the hotfix already installed, remove it, it makes the game harder and you just get a minor damage bonus if you lack cunning. I'd also would respec one of your rogues, as having 2 bards doesn't make sense.
Yes. Raised my cunning from 29 to 30, after that I could open a chest I couldn't open before. I guess it works like this.
Can not open if:
Chest difficutly>Lockpicking x10 +(Cunning -10)
So you could open a level 40 chest with lockpicking 1 and 40 cunning. Or with cunning 10 and lockpicking 4. There are chest you can't open with lockpicking 4 if you do not have enough cunning. Coercion seems to work similar.
Yeah I think I'll do that when I resume and it's not patched yet, get out of the Deeproads, ditch Leliana, spec out of Bard and go assasin, I need to respec anyway, I went for dual weapon mastery to wield longswords only to find out I need tons more STR and I like daggers + momentum attack speed more.
I'll probably also have to start playing "decent" with it indeed, more micro'ing my rogue, using stealth for the crits etc
That's my build atm as you can see it's all over the place. After the respec I'm just going to put my points in DEX+CUN and STR to about 22 for the armor prereqs and just keep it there.
Ah well, that's for when I finished my warrior playthrough though, but talking about all this makes me want to play my rogue again Just so much more cool stuff you can do with it.
Thx for the pointers!
edit: interesting threads on;
rogue mechanics (lockpicking etc) -> http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/243304
rogue dw dps calculations -> http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/223777/1
I'll probably also have to start playing "decent" with it indeed, more micro'ing my rogue, using stealth for the crits etc
That's my build atm as you can see it's all over the place. After the respec I'm just going to put my points in DEX+CUN and STR to about 22 for the armor prereqs and just keep it there.
Ah well, that's for when I finished my warrior playthrough though, but talking about all this makes me want to play my rogue again
Just so much more cool stuff you can do with it.Thx for the pointers!
edit: interesting threads on;
rogue mechanics (lockpicking etc) -> http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/243304
rogue dw dps calculations -> http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/223777/1
NemesisPrime
Banned
Nemesis556 said:
I hope you know you can summon support troops?
Anyway if you do... I summoned my Dwarfs and they kept the Darkspawn busy while I killed them with my team. After that I still had all my mages left to range the boss.
NemesisPrime
Banned
Cheech said:
Yeah ME2 will probably be the superior game, but DA is *for me* the best FRPG in a LONG time (probably since Oblivion) and probably the best party based FRPG since BG. Can't wait for ME2... the intro soundtrack alone gave me goose bumps.
sweetvar26
Member
I still can't get that 'Traveller' achievement, I am like 2% short of the world discovered, damnit.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
There are a few locations you can miss based on how you play the story... and also a few you can miss if you don't take on the side quests.
I kind of don't like these vague achievements, but oh well.
I kind of don't like these vague achievements, but oh well.
Anerythristic
Member
dionysus said:
Did the same thing. Keep in mind I did beat the entire game with that character though. Probably the most difficult class to spec. They use Str./Cun./Dext. and even Con.
I usually love thief/rogue classes in games, not in this one, even the trap making and the poison which was effective in the first third of the game eventually fall to the wayside.
Its a class that needs to be reworked by the next DA.
Moonstone has it right, imo. Cunning and daggers is the way to go - you lose in defense and attack rating, but these things are generally not very important since you should be going about things in a manner that makes them less so (backstab!). The extra points you spend getting to Lethality is made up by the points in Deft Hands you generally don't need because of your Cunning score. Daggers also let you exploit the rather stupid enchanting system to your biggest benefit, which can be more profound earlier on.
I only wish they bothered to craft interesting looking armor aside from massive armor. If you're a Rogue, what you look like at the start of the game is basically what you look like at the end - there is nothing cool like Blood Dragon armor to look forward to at all. Fucking Bioware.
I only wish they bothered to craft interesting looking armor aside from massive armor. If you're a Rogue, what you look like at the start of the game is basically what you look like at the end - there is nothing cool like Blood Dragon armor to look forward to at all. Fucking Bioware.